Hara Partners

Archive for July, 2015

An e-commerce analyst is similar to a market analyst, except he or she looks specifically at transactions that occur on the Internet and researches ways to improve on existing sales goals.

A successful e-commerce analyst leverages data about the users he services to improve the conversion rate of the companies he works for.

Potential e-commerce analysts will need to know how to use analytics software and Excel, and the right communication skills to articulate the results of your data.

Step 1

Determine whether you have the right prerequisites for becoming an e-commerce analyst. A bachelor’s degree in market research, statistics or other related fields is usually required. Candidates should also have strong mathematical and analytical skills. Good communication is highly desired because the ability to interpret and communicate results are essential.

Step 2

Get certified through a reputable source as an e-commerce analyst, or someone familiar with analytics software. The Marketing Research Association offers a certification that must be reviewed every two years. For a small fee, the applicant is granted access to an exam that tests his knowledge of e-commerce with a certificate awarded upon successful completion.

Step 3

Fill out an application for the job you desire, and include a cover letter. The CV should include blurbs that highlight your experience interpreting large amounts of data. Your resume should include examples where you have used Excel or analytics programs such as Google Analytics to discover important facts about customer behavior. You should also list your familiarity with e-commerce engines like PayPal, Amazon and eBay on your resume.

Step 4

Negotiate your pay after you get a job offer and think about your future possibilities. Nationwide, the number of market research analysts is expected to grow as much as 41 percent by the year 2020. As more data becomes available, companies have an increasing demand for workers to interpret it into something useful. The top ten percent of market research analysts earned more than $100,000 per year, with the lowest ten percent earning just above $30,000. The median pay for a market research analyst working in the information sector is $70,000.

How to Use Vsnap To Increase Online Sales

Have you ever heard of Vsnap? No? Well, Vsnap is a genius idea.

Vsnap works as a video messaging tool for eCommerce. It lets retailers and sales people connect with their buyers through sending quick video messages. It works similarly like Facetime and Vine to establish a human connection between retailers and customers.

How Does Vsnap Work?

You can follow these easy steps to increase your online sales using Vsnap.

Firstly, you record a short video message on the web or on Apple’s mobile operating system IOS. IOS is mainly found on IPhones. These video messages should last about 60 seconds or less. Then, you share your video message via twitter or private email to the recipient. You can customize your email by adding the company logo, changing the font and editing in general. Customers can view these video messages no matter what type of device they possess. They do not even have to download anything to see your messages. This is a huge advantage because it is extremely easy for customers to view your video messages. It also makes Vsnap universal. Salespeople can also activate real-time alerts. A real time alert sends you a notification of when your customer has seen your Vsnap. It also lets you see if they act upon the attached documents or links that you have sent them.

What are the advantages of using Vsnap?

Vsnap creates a sense of individual connection between salespeople and buyers. This knocks down the cold cooperate wall, to establish a sense of human connection. Hence, Vsnap makes customers feel special and ensures them that your business cares about them. You do not receive a human connection via email or letter. Therefore, Vsnap is a much more personalized form of communication.

It is the perfect tool for people who have Face Blindness. Sufferers of Face Blindness cannot recognize faces – even the faces of their dearest family members. Vsnap helps these people put an image – a distorted image, nonetheless – to a name which they could not place via the written word of email or letter. To find out more about Face Blindness, go to: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-blindness-when-everyone-is-a-stranger-20-03-2012/

The increase of sales can be huge for online businesses. An established human connection promotes a sense of friendliness and encourages your customers to trust you. Vsnap is a really useful tool to have. Many businesses have had a great experience using Vsnap. They have seen a great increase in online sales and have developed friendlier relationships with their customers.Vsnap users include online career school Penn Foster and Boston-based, women’s fashion line Zoora. Penn Foster wants to be successful in online schooling; therefore, the personalization of video messaging is crucial. Vsnap is useful for smaller businesses like Zoora as it creates a personal touch between retailer and customer. It also helps them stand-out from their competitors who do not communicate with their customers through video messaging. If your business does not use Vsnap already, you should definitely consider it.

Vsnap loves to meet new customers and help you email like a person, not a robot. You can buy Vsnap for $33 a month. This fee gets you unlimited Vsnaps and allows you to customize emails. Hara Partners had the pleasure of hosting CEO of Vsnap, Dave McLaughlin at our November eCommerce meet-up: http://www.meetup.com/New-York-eCommerce-Meetup/events/215279532/ He gave us great examples of how short videos increase customer satisfaction and sales. Vsnap really is the perfect video messaging tool for eCommerce as it can increase close rates by as much as 34%. If you would like more information about how to get Vsnap, contact us at: http://www.harapartners.com/contact-us/

If you’re currently thinking of switching to another e-commerce platform, you may have second doubts about it being Magento. On our blog, and the blogs of other Magento companies, the argument will clearly be in favor for it. But what are some of the arguments in favor of Magento being the ultimate e-commerce platform?

Feature Functionality

Magento’s core merchandising and SEO features easily surpass its competitors. It features more than 1800 templates you can leverage for your user interface, and you can create your own theme and user experience.

Magento’s continuously expanding features (Mobile HTML 5 support, RMA, customer groups and segmentation, plus many others) offers an ongoing value for your investment that you don’t get from the competitors. Magento’s committed product road map also introduces new advanced features every few months that merchants can take advantage of.

Superior Integration Options

Magento provides not only a pre-built API that can be integrated into virtually any ERP or order management solution, but its open source base also allows you to leverage database based integrations and other design patterns.

SEO-Friendly

Multi‐Site Capability

You can run several stores on the same installation of Magento. This really helps businesses focus on niche websites and steers them away from cluttered one‐stop‐shop solutions.

Easy Import/Export of Data

Magento makes data sorting and management easy, and allows you to sort by categories that can be customized.

Price

If you’re a small merchant looking for a low-cost turnkey SaaS solution, at $15 per month Magento Go is priced far less than competitors such as Shopify and Big Commerce.

For any merchant making more than $500,000 in online business, Magento Enterprise can also save you big bucks, lowering your total 3-year costs which include the labor costs associated with maintaining your website.

While anyone can start a web store these days and sell their products directly to customers online, the benefits among for B2B owners in particular are sometimes overlooked. Below we’ve outlined five reasons why web stores are the future for B2B specifically.

1) Rising Sales

Owners of B2B companies can surely reap the benefits of sales much more directly, but there’s still a great deal of opportunity for B2B eCommerce as well.

In 2013, B2B eCommerce sales reached $559 billion, which was more than twice the size of B2C eCommerce sales.

2) Simplicity

Web stores can also be used as online order entry tools for customer service and sales reps.

For example, k-eCommerce has a Sales Portal, which can be used on the road by sales reps and synchronizes back to Microsoft Dynamics.

3) Customers

Even if you don’t have the clout of a company like Amazon, you are still likely to gain customers who are interested in the potential of eCommerce.

Even if they’re not asking for it, they’re ready to stop scanning orders or emailing your sales team. They want to reorder with a click, make orders on the fly and upload big ones as a .CSV.

4) Mobile

No matter how you’re taking orders, it needs to be easy to do on a mobile device. That means it should be simple, responsive and functional.

Whether orders are being entered by clients or sales reps, this is a critical piece of an omni-channel strategy.

5) Personalization

Finally, personalization is a new trend in the eCommerce world. Rather than focusing on promoting a specific product line, this change places focus on each unique customer.

Personalization features within k-eCommerce includes custom catalogs per user. B2B marketers are increasingly turning to web site personalization to provide content that is specifically geared towards individual buyers, largely segmented by industry, department, function or role.